ROCK SPRINGS — The Moving Wall is on display at Western Wyoming Community College through Sunday, August 25.
The wall is a half-size replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C.
The Moving Wall has been traveling around the country since 1984. There are now two of the memorial replicas and both are on the move from April though November each year, spending around a week in each city they stop in. The Moving Wall just came from Michigan and will make its next stop in Arizona.
The display also stopped in Rock Springs back in 2015 and Tony Blair of VFW Post 2321 in Green River said he was excited to have an opportunity to help bring it back again. “The main thing is, it’s here, we’re probably never going to see it again and the opportunity came up and we had more people to help this time,” Blair said.
The wall is lighted for display after dark and volunteers stick around all night to attend to visitors. “Everybody has their reason for wanting to come out here,” Blair said. “One guy, actually he was a company commander. He took 100 guys out on night patrol and walked into an ambush. Within 15 minutes 80 percent of his guys were gone. So, he comes out at two or three in the morning and he knew where all his guys were [on the wall] and I watched him. He’d find the name and whatever he had to do and he moved all the way down the all until he found all 80 of his guys.”
There are over 58,000 names on the memorial. There are 119 names of casualties from Wyoming and 13 from Sweetwater County. The Veterans Commission supplied photos of the men from Wyoming who were lost in Vietnam. The pictures are on display in a tent near the wall.